Free The Altar at Asconel by John Brunner Page B

absently.
    “Then you are in luck,” she said with a shrug. “Try to look on that side of it. I will go fix refreshments against your brother’s arrival.”
    She slipped silently from the cabin, and the two men settled down to try and abide by her extremely sensible advice.

X
    I T SEEMED that a slow eternity passed before they again heard a bang on the outer door. Vix leapt to his feet.
    “That
must
be the girl being brought!” he declared. “And we
still
haven’t heard from Tiorin!”
    “I don’t think so,” Spartak countered, and now voiced the thought which had occurred to him earlier: that the port authorities would certainly advise them of the girl’s arrival by communicator. He went to open the lock, and found Rochard had returned.
    “I wouldn’t have been so long,” the nervous man exclaimed, “but I thought it safer to try and reach you by communicator rather than come back. Only once you’re under Imperial requisition even the palms I can normally grease seem to be put back in their pockets.…To the point, since I did have to come here again: your brother is on his way, and if you can delay your departure one more hour he’ll join you. Uh—I can’t help wondering,” he finished in a fawning tone, “whether I may not have done you too some small service.…?”
    Spartak had been isolated in the environment of his order on Annanworld for so long that at first he did not get the point of this delicate probe for a gratuity. When he did, he found he was ignorant of the current purchasing power of Imperial money. He fumbled a twenty-circle piece fromhis pouch, and that seemed to satisfy Rochard; at any rate, he gave a mechanical smile and scampered down the ladder again.
    “I wonder who he is,” Spartak murmured to Vix when he had relayed Rochard’s news.
    “Him?” Vix shrugged. “He’s of a type which I’ve seen spring up on a dozen worlds—carrion worms infesting the gangrened body of the old Empire. Probably he’s regretting this instant that we’re not doing anything which would entitle him to a reward if he informed on us to the port authorities. That’s how people like him make a living: buying and selling information for use in blackmail, law evasion, and petty crime in general.”
    “I thought he was a frightened fool when I first saw him,” Spartak admitted. “But he must be pretty astute.”
    “Astute? Him? He didn’t even try to find out if we were from Bucyon, like the assassin he told us about who came after Tiorin. He might have sold out his best employer and seen his throat cut without reward to himself.”
    Spartak was briefly silent. Then he mentioned his un-familiarity with the purchasing power of money nowadays, and added ruefully, “I think I’ve been too long away from real life, Vix!”
    “I could have been put away from it permanently, but for quick thinking on your part,” Vix retorted in a gruff tone. “At least we know we need only delay another hour, now. I hope they’re having trouble locating this mutant girl.”
    But barely half the hoped-for period had gone by when the communicator barked at them.
    “Vix of Asconel, come to the port control building. Your passenger under requisition is here.”
    Vix and Spartak exchanged glances that promised determination to resist, and sat tight, their mouths clamped shut on the temptation to answer and comply.
    After a second peremptory order, however, there was a noise from below, and Vix jumped up.
    “Vineta!” he exclaimed. “The conditioning is on her too, isn’t it?”
    Spartak nodded. “Is she trying to get out of the lock?”
    “No, it doesn’t sound like it.” Vix went to the door to peer out. “No, she’s coming here!”
    The girl’s face was pearled with sweat, and her teeth were chattering. “Vix, you must shut me in the cabin!” she forced out. “Or else I cannot stay against the orders I can hear!”
    “Hear?” Vix rapped.
    She nodded. “Like a little voice in my own head,